Breathing

The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life. If it were his intention and he withdrew his spirit and breath, all mankind would perish together and man would return to the dust.

Job 33:4, 34:14-15 (NIV)

Trust is not an easy task for me. I suppose it's not easy for most of us, but if you spent your growing-up years waiting impatiently for the day when you can control your own destiny, trust may be especially hard. How do I trust in God's protection when, it seems clear from any newscast, God's idea of protection and mine are not the same?

The other night as I lay in bed, I was fighting a not uncommon flood of anxiety. I became very conscious of my breathing: in and out, in and out. A thought struck me, "Were it not for God providing my every breath, I would die."

As I consider the implications of that statement, I realize there are many things that I expect God to continue to do, just as He has done before. The sun will rise tomorrow, spring will follow winter, I will take another breath. Wouldn't it be fair to restate the above as, I trust God to give me breath/bring the seasons/send tomorrow at the end of today?

When I look at it that way, there is an awful lot of my life I have already entrusted to God. I worry about making enough money to pay the bills or being physically attacked or getting into a car accident. How much of my life is on-line billpay and driving when compared to making sure I'm breathing and my heart is pumping? My heart has to beat 100,000 times a day; I don't spend my days and nights worrying about it suddenly stopping. I only have to pay bills two or three times a month. Why do I waste so many hours worried about that?

Trust isn't so much a new thing I need to figure out how to do as something I already do with most of my life. I don't need to learn to trust God, just apply what I know to do in the rest of my life to these areas where I do fear. And somehow, that doesn't seem quite so hard.